*!Free Giveaway!* Antiqued Heart Necklace

A break from wedding posts today to tell you about this fantastic giveaway at Inis, the new blog of my favourite shop. Inis is a lovely boutique in my hometown of Hawick and they also have an online shop which delivers internationally.

To celebrate the launch of their blog they are giving away this beautiful antiqued heart necklace. Go to the Inis blog for all of the details and to enter the giveaway. Good luck! x

Wedding Report Part II - The Dress

As I'm sure is true for most brides, the most exciting part of the wedding preparations for me was choosing the dress. I loved going dress shopping with my mum and sharing those precious moments together, just the two of us. I tried on a lot of dresses in various bridal shops but they were all quite similar, strapless with full skirts and a lot of beading. They were all beautiful but I knew that I wanted something a little bit different. I eventually found 'The One' in a shop called Pan Pan in Edinburgh. It was a Jenny Packham dress called Petra and I fell in love with it immediately. From that moment I couldn't wait to wear it on my wedding day. I chose a hair comb also by Jenny Packham and a beaded veil completed the look.

Photo by McBeth Photography

Remember that parasol I posted about here?

I can't describe how much I loved wearing that dress. It felt so beautiful and elegant and I loved the way it floated around as I danced at our reception. The great thing is that I get to wear it again when we have Part II of our wedding back in Italy in a couple of weeks time. Lucky me! :)

Photo by McBeth Photography

Wedding Report Part I - La Serenata

It's more than 2 weeks since our beautiful wedding day and it's time I wrote a few posts about the celebrations while everything is still fresh in my memory. It's amazing how quickly things start to go a bit foggy.

After a months build up including dress fittings, hair appointments, a wedding shower, hen party, stag party and family and friends arriving from around the world, the main celebrations started on the night before the wedding with 'La Serenata.' This is an Italian tradition where the groom goes to the bride's house and serenades her from below her window. All of our Italian guests, friends, family and neighbours came to watch and Matteo's family cooked up a feast. The garden was decorated with candles in jars hanging from the trees and it was magical to look down on from my bedroom window. Matteo sang several songs in Italian, including my favourite La Donna Canone and a Scottish song, Caledonia all accompanied by his friend Lucio on the keyboard or my mum on the guitar. It was a wonderfully romantic start to our perfect wedding weekend.

We're married.........

.....and it was perfect!

Beautiful photo from our talented photographer Craig McBeth

Final Count Down!

Only four days to go until I marry my Italian! It's been really hectic the past few weeks and I haven't been able to keep up to date with my blog. I just wanted to pop in to thank everyone for their kind comments about my wedding invitations and for all of your best wishes. I'll be back in a few weeks with all of the details from the big day.......

Our Wedding Invitations

After an exhasting 2 weeks at Summer camp I'm back in Scotland and in the midst of wedding preparations. It's pretty hectic but hopefully I'll manage to keep my blog up to date over the next few weeks. Finally, here is the post about my invitations.

I must have considered 100 different designs for my invitations before we settled on one we were both happy with. One thing I knew from the start was that I wanted to make them myself. In the end we settled on a very simple idea but sourcing all of the materials was quite tricky and time consuming. The Internet is a wondeful thing but at times very frustrating!

Here are all of the materials we used:

1. Woodware brown Kraft card pack with envelopes from Crafts U Love

2. Rubber stamp made by a local company from an image I drew myself

3. Douglas tartan ribbon from tartan-ribbon.com

4. Calligraphy pen from a local stationer's

5. Martha Stewart lace edge paper punch bought from Crafts U Love

It doesn't seem like much but I spent many hours online and trailing around shops in Perugia before we found exactly what we wanted.

The first task was to stamp the front of the cards. The reason we chose a hedgehog is because Matteo's surname 'Ricci' translated into English means Hedgehogs! I drew the image myself and we emailed it to a local shop which makes rubber stamps. I was really pleased how well it turned out.

The inside of the invitations we designed on the computer using a font downloaded for free from here. We then punched the bottom edge using the Martha Stewart punch.......

Matteo's job was to stick the paper inside the cards using double-sided sticky tape........

and then cut the ribbon ready for me to tie in a bow round the cards........

I addressed all the envelopes by hand and finally we stamped the back of the envelopes using a butterfly stamp which is a bigger version of the butterfly on the end of the hedgehog's nose.

The pretty Italian francobolli (stamps) finished off the look and eventually they were all ready to be posted. We visited 3 post boxes before I was finally able to part with the invitations I'd spent so long making. The first one was right next to a muddy puddle and the second one was already full.

Overall I'm extremely pleased with the finished result. They do look a bit

amateur and home made but then home made is exactly what they are and how a lot of our wedding will be. I think they reflect our personalities and are unique and personal to us. We had a lot of fun making them together and they were sent off with a lot of love tied up inside the ribbon!

Things that Make me Happy Part Ten

10. Family

Last but certainly not least on my happiness list is my family. I enjoy every minute I spend with my family. They're so much fun and we always have such crazy times together.

This picture was taken on New Year's Eve 2008, the last time we were all together. (Excuse the slightly tipsy looks, it was New Year's Eve after all!) I can't wait until this Summer when we'll all be together again for my wedding.

Today I'm leaving for a 2 week summer camp in Torre Alfina, a little town in our neighbouring region of Lazio. It's a fun camp filled with English activities, theatre, sports, swimming and excursions. When the camp is finished I'm heading straight off to Scotland where I'll be until after our wedding. I won't have much time for blogging over the next 2 weeks but will be back once I arrive in Scotland. It's going to be one great Summer!

Things that Make me Happy Part Nine

9. House Renovations

The renovation of our house is a source of great happiness for Matteo and I. It's a wondeful feeling to be rebuilding this home that has been in Matteo's family for such a long time. The work is slow to get started which is extremely frustrating at times but I have to keep focused on my vision for the house and enjoy the whole experience of the renovation.

The most recent development was knocking down the dividing wall in the kitchen to expose the original arch. Now we can get a real sense of the proportions of our kitchen and start to get a better idea of how the room will be.

Here is the kitchen before, so dark and dingy:

And now with the arch exposed, it's so much lighter:

It may be a small step but it's a step in the right direction.